


Heaven Cannot Hold Him, Nor Earth Sustain

by Mad_Maudlin



Category: Daredevil (TV)
Genre: Christmas Miracles, Foggy Nelson contains multitudes, Gen, Human Disaster Matt Murdock, Magic Realism, Post-Season/Series 02, Reconciliation, Whump, graphic injury mention, matt and foggy use their words, sort of identity porn, split personality, this is not a christmas story though
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-12-06
Updated: 2016-12-06
Packaged: 2018-09-06 22:54:26
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 9,378
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8772619
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Mad_Maudlin/pseuds/Mad_Maudlin
Summary: Daredevil is terrorizing the people of Hell's Kitchen. Matt Murdock is in a coma. Foggy could use a miracle right about now.





	

**Author's Note:**

> Title from "In The Bleak Midwinter" by Christina Rossetti. Thanks to Kari for the beta.
> 
>  **Edit 12/27:** some medibabble has been modified with the help of ScriptMedic on Tumblr.

Foggy's phone woke him; the lock screen said it was barely eight. He'd been up way, way too late putting all his paperwork in order for Monday, only to step out of HC&B's offices into a raging ice storm—the one the news had been chattering about all day, and half the staff had left early to avoid, the lucky ones who were able. By the time he was done, well past midnight, there were no cabs to be seen and he would've needed skates to even get down the sidewalks. Perils of being the new guy, reputation or no: he was at the bottom of the pecking order and low-key recipient of everyone else’s scutwork. Crashing on the couch in the waiting area was just the undignified cherry on top.

He didn't recognize the number calling him, and while he blearily tried to get his marbles in order, it went to voicemail. There was another missed call from about an hour earlier that he must've slept straight through. A quick peek out the windows showed a few signs of life—cars moving slowly, pedestrians moving slower—but the trees were thickly glazed with ice and the sky was still gray and murky. 

There were actually three new voice messages in his voice mail, starting from four o'clock. He played the first one.

_Mr. Nelson, this is Father Greg Lantom. I thought you would want to be notified...Matt Murdock's been in an accident._

Foggy's heart didn't actually skip a beat. The punch in the stomach was entirely figurative. 

_He's in the emergency room at Metro-General right now; I'll let you know more when I have more information available, if you like. This is my cell phone, so you should be able to reach me at any time._

Foggy let his phone drop to the couch and pressed his hands into his gritty eyes. He hadn't talked to Matt in...months, unless you counted the occasional stilted greeting when they happen to cross paths around the neighborhood. He tried not to pay attention to their old office, didn't even know if Matt was still there since the Nelson and Murdock plaque had vanished, and tried very, very hard not to pay attention to news stories about Daredevil, because—because—

Because of this _this exact thing,_ damn it. 

He checked headlines on his phone, bracing himself for _Daredevil Unmasked!_ but there was nothing—all the local news was about the ice storm, listing power outages and traffic accidents, where roads had been plowed and salted, what was closed for the day. Maybe Lantom had managed to cover for him, then; or maybe it wasn't even Daredevil related, maybe Matt had finally fallen down a damned manhole. 

Only one way to find out. 

The other two voice mails were also from Lantom, but they weren't really any new information—that Matt had been admitted to the neuro ICU (the goddamn _ICU)_ and his room number, in case Foggy wanted to come by in person. Foggy still wasn't sure he did. But he called back, and Lantom picked up on the second ring. _"Hello? Mr. Nelson?"_

"Hi, uh, Father." Was that the right way to address a priest? Or was that only if you were actually Catholic? "I just got your messages. What happened?"

 _"The police are telling me it appears to be a hit-and-run,"_ which, haha, of course, let Matt go out chasing violent death every night of the week and then get hit by a goddamned _car._ _"They haven't found any witnesses, but a good Samaritan called an ambulance. And since he still had the bulletin from last week's Mass in his pocket, the hospital contacted me."_

Christ. "So he's...I mean, is he…"

 _"Still unconscious, but the doctors say he's stable."_ Lantom hesitated. _"I'm aware you're no longer in business together, Mr. Nelson, but the hospital is inquiring about his insurance..."_

Which, if he hadn't somehow upgraded it from the COBRA policies they'd bought when they left L&Z, would barely cover band-aids, never mind the ICU. "Uh, yeah, I think...as far as I know, his secretary is a woman named Karen Page, I can text you her number. She'll probably know that stuff."

_"I appreciate it."_

Foggy flopped backwards on the couch, covering his eyes, and told himself he was going to go home, change clothes and relax. That he'd made a clean break, and he was over it, and it was done. That, as much as it sucked, it was just another tragedy in Hell's Kitchen, and there were enough of those every day. 

Oh, who the hell was he kidding.

//

He did make his way home to change, and ended up running into Karen in the hospital lobby. He'd seen her around the neighborhood, too, over the past couple of months, and at first he'd thought maybe they could stay friends—but she'd been distant to him, like she'd picked a side, and Foggy had decided he wasn't gonna lose sleep over it if she had. "Hey," she said awkwardly, pushing back the hood of her parka. 

"Father Lantom get ahold of you?" he asked her.

She nodded. "I'm not—Matt and I haven't talked in, uh, a while, but I never got around to giving back the keys to the office, so..."

Foggy winced, and tried to tell himself it was good that he'd gotten out when he did, because _clearly_ Matt had his priorities in order, didn't he? And they apparently involved burning his bridges left, right and center. But Foggy also wasn't a total dick, so he asked quietly, "He's not gonna be able to afford this, is he?"

Karen forced a thin smile. "I already set up a GoFundMe."

The ICU didn't have much privacy – the rooms were more like glass cubicles, some with curtains drawn but most wide open. So as soon as they came around a corner, Foggy's eyes locked on an IV stand, and a heart monitor, and a massive tube connected to a ventilator, and about a mile and a half of crisp white bandages all bundled onto a bed. 

Matt was under there somewhere, and yeah, Foggy was allowed to feel his stomach roll. Maybe they weren't friends anymore, but nobody deserved _that._

"Thank you for coming." Foggy just about jumped out of his skin; Lantom--he had to double-check for the dog collar to be sure--had turned up with a cup of coffee while he and Karen were staring in disbelief. 

"Thanks for calling us." Karen still had one hand over her mouth looking heartbroken, and Foggy fought down the urge to put an arm around her. "He—he looks--"

"He's got a broken leg, broken ribs, a skull fracture, various internal injuries," Lantom said quietly. "And a touch of frostbite, but on the balance, the cold probably kept him from bleeding to death."

Matt's face—what was visible, anyway—was scratched and bruised, and his hands were swaddled in mittens of bandages. One leg stuck out from under the blankets, encased in plaster from heel to knee. "The cops said a car did this?" Foggy asked, skeptically, although honestly he wouldn't have been able to tell if some the wounds were from--

"As opposed to his volunteer work, you mean?" 

Lantom said it mildly, but Foggy looked at him, and then looked at Karen only to find that Karen was looking at _him,_ but as soon as they made eye contact she was looking back at Lantom with a furrowed brow.

"I know," the priest said quietly. "And I know you both know, and anything other than that is covered by the seal of confession."

Well, weren't they all a happy little ring of accessories-after-the-fact. "But this wasn't...'volunteer work,'" Karen said. "Or he would've been, uh, dressed for it."

"I mean, it was slicker than sh---Shineola out last night," Foggy pointed out. (He wasn't sure if cursing in front of a priest was a mortal sin or something.) "What was he doing out in the first place?"

“What was anyone doing driving in the first place?” Karen shot back.

None of them had answers. Because this was what was left of Matt's life, apparently. Burned bridges.

//

Sunday morning Foggy rolled out of bed and flipped on the news out of habit. He just wanted to know if the snow was ever gonna stop, and maybe who the Jets were playing.

_"—also known as the Devil of Hell's Kitchen."_

He froze.

_"The first incident occurred at approximately ten p.m., when multiple witnesses called in to report a possible break-in at a bodega on 36th street. Officers responding to the calls discovered three suspects trapped in the bodega's walk-in cooler, reportedly begging for police protection. In the second incident, this time at around one in the morning, a waitress leaving her night-shift job claims the Daredevil defended her from an attempted armed robbery. And at ten minutes past three this morning, a fire broke out in a suspected meth-making operation across the street from DeWitt-Clinton park. Witnesses claim that they saw Daredevil at the scene of the fire, but police will neither confirm nor deny--"_

Foggy reached for his phone. It was already ringing.

 _"Foggy, turn on the news,"_ Karen said breathlessly.

"Watching." They now had Brett Mahoney giving a statement, which was the same statement Brett always gave—neither confirm or deny, of course they don't condone vigilante activity, all possible leads, et cetera, et cetera. 

_"That wasn't...it can't be Matt, can it?"_

"Not unless he's got another superpower he didn't mention."

And a mean, petty part of Foggy wouldn't have put anything past Matt—but, no, he'd seen the guy unconscious and bleeding; if he couldn't bounce back from that overnight, he wasn't gonna pull out of a breathing tube and immediately go Fight Club-ing. 

Karen hesitated long enough that Foggy almost thought the call had dropped. _"So who's wearing the mask?"_

//

Monday morning there were another three Daredevil sightings. 

On Tuesday morning it was five.

Foggy met Karen for lunch, trudging through the gray-brown slush that built up faster than anyone could shovel it—where anyone was even bothering to shovel it. "Thank you," she said quietly. "I didn't—I know I haven't been very friendly lately. I was mad at him and I took it out on you, too. I'm sorry."

"Apology accepted," Foggy said. "I shouldn't have kept his secrets for him." 

"Do you mind talking about this?" 

"I wouldn't be here if I did."

She had printed out a map from Google and marked five spots in marker. "I got this from the morning news. Five incidents, five different locations. These two--" she pointed to one on 58th street, near the piers (attempted mugging) and another practically in the Garment District (attempted rape) "--happened less than an hour apart."

"That's walkable," Foggy pointed out. "I could walk that."

"Would you be up to putting two people in traction afterwards?"

That was the other thing, besides the...prolific activity. Foggy didn't harbor any illusions about how Matt did his thing, but there was something _nasty_ about these new incidents. Not like Frank Castle levels of violence, but more like...carelessness. Like he really didn't care if black eyes and broken wrists lead to broken necks or punctured lungs--

And, according to Father Lantom, Matt hadn't yet regained consciousness. 

"I made some calls last night," Foggy told Karen. "The police aren't pursuing whoever hit Matt because there's no leads—no witnesses, no surveillance tape."

"Except for whoever called the ambulance," Karen said.

"Right, except according to the 911 dispatcher, he didn't give his name or stay on the line after he called it in," Foggy said. "Ambulance crew saw nobody at the scene, though they weren't exactly looking for footprints."

Karen bit her lip. "It could've been the driver," she said, but even she didn't sound convinced. "Whoever hit him called the ambulance and then drove away."

"Could be," Foggy allowed. "Though if Matt was laying out there long enough to get frostbite—I know ambulance response times aren't the greatest these days in good weather, but it also seems like maybe our 'Good Samaritan' waited to make the call for some reason."

"So it could just be a coincidence," Karen said. "Maybe he didn't witness the accident, maybe he just found Matt afterward. There's a lot of reasons someone might not want to hang around a crime scene."

Foggy pushed his stupid hipster artisanal potato chips around his basket. "Or maybe Matt has a buddy filling in for him at his 'volunteer position,' and he's the one who called it in."

Not like either of them would know. Not like it was any of Foggy's business, or could be, because _massively illegal._ But if there was a replacement Daredevil out there...

Look, Foggy was allowed to miss Matt's friendship and still hold a massive grudge against him. He contained multitudes, et cetera. 

Karen grimaced, and seemed to decide a change of subject was in order. "The GoFundMe is...going," she said bleakly. "The hospital asked about a living will and I didn't know. There is...so much I just don't know, and if he wasn't already on a respirator I think I'd strangle him."

"What did they want a will for?" Foggy asked. Last he'd heard the doctors had said Matt was stable. 

She shook her head. "I hope they're just preparing for the worst, but…" But _stable_ didn't mean _improving_ and Jesus, if Matt actually died from this--

Foggy had to be in court in an hour. Foggy had to not be worrying about miscellaneous vigilantes in an hour. "I'm like 70% sure I can expense this," he told Karen. "Gimme your receipt and I can pay you back if it works."

"You don't have to--"

"Yeah, but I want to." 

She shuffled through napkins and pieces of wrapper on her tray, and then she froze, and plucked her receipt up by the corner. "Was this written on here when we paid?"

Foggy took the receipt from her. On the back, in red, someone had written in jumpy, irregular print: PLEASED TO MEET YOU.

"I don't know, was it?" Foggy craned his neck to look at the counter. "That kid working the register looks kinda creepy..."

But Karen fished Foggy's receipt out from under the uneaten half of his sandwich, and flipped it over. HOPE YOU GUESSED MY NAME. 

"Creepy and also a Stones fan?" Foggy offered, weakly. 

//

There was a number he hadn't quite been able to delete from his phone, because he contained multitudes, dammit. That night he called it. "Hi, Claire, it's, uh...it's about Matt."

_"Where is he this time?"_

"Metro-General. In a coma. Since Friday."

Softly, and with great feeling, Claire said, _"Shit."_

Foggy looked at the two receipts, which he hadn't turned into HC&B's accountant. "Yeah. So. If you've got any ideas who's filling in for him…"

_"I haven't seen him in a while. Since maybe November, actually. Thought that was a good thing."_

"So if this is, if he's got a padawan or something, he never mentioned to you…?"

_"No. I know a few other, uh, interesting people, and I could ask around, but...he never said anything himself."_

"I figured I'd ask anyway. Thanks."

The writing on the back the receipts was blocky, uneven—some of the letters crowded together until they almost overlapped. Creepy or not, he didn't think the random kid at the cash register was scribbling Stones lyrics on all the receipts—he might not even be old enough to know who the Stones _were._ And Foggy couldn't remember if the cashier had written anything, if he'd had time to write anything, because obviously his attention had been on other things. 

Plus, as threats went, song lyrics on deli receipts was a little obscure. Especially since, if they hadn't happened to look at both receipts together, he doubted either of them would've caught the reference, and the knowledge it implied.

(Not to mention that "Sympathy for the Devil" was kind of the opposite of Foggy's problem.)

He eventually put the receipts somewhere safe, just in case he needed them as some kind of evidence. Then, because no amount of vague musical intimidation would qualify him for a personal day, he went to bed. 

//

Wednesday morning there were eight different Daredevil sightings in Hell's Kitchen. Not eight different crimes—it was too damn cold out for crime, at night or any other time of day, so apparently Daredevil was branching out. _"He had, like, glowing eyes and shit, and this creepy laugh,"_ said a guy on the morning news who hadn't been doing anything worse than smoking in an alley. _"And he was_ fast, _man. I'm gonna have (bleep!) nightmares."_

 _"He chased us all the way to Eighth Avenue and then he just disappeared, like some kind of ghost,"_ and this was a kid, a high school girl who at worst had committed a crime against fashion.

 _"We have a dedicated vigilante task force working this case,"_ Brett Mahoney said, looking like he hadn't slept much for the past week. _"I don't care what Daredevil may have done for this community in the past. Harassment is still harassment, even if you're wearing a costume."_

 _Matt_ didn't scare people for the (heh) hell of it. At least, Foggy didn't think he did, but then again he'd thought a lot of things about Matt that turned out not to be true.

Thursday morning brought another six Daredevil incidents, and Karen texting him that _this can't be one person, Foggy, unless he can teleport._ It was the first day Foggy could justify leaving early—scutwork or no scutwork—and he told himself he wasn't going to visit Matt in the hospital right up until he was standing outside the visitor's entrance, freezing his ass off. _You're allowed,_ he decided, allowed to be angry and also scared and it was kind of pointless, giving Matt the cold shoulder when he was too comatose to appreciate it. 

Visiting hours in the ICU were pretty open, because...well. Father Lantom was by Matt's bedside with a rosary, but he looked up when Foggy came in. "Mr. Nelson."

"You can just call me Foggy, everybody else does." Matt still had the breathing tube, and he managed to look even worse than Saturday. The bruises were going yellow and green, the cuts had scabbed, but his cheekbones stood out too sharply, and he'd officially crossed the line from roguish stubble to hobo beard. A thinner tube ran down his nose, and Foggy wondered if they were using that to feed him. "Kinda surprised to see you here."

"I could say the same thing about you." Lantom didn't sound accusing, just stating a fact, but it still made Foggy's metaphorical hackles go up. "Though as it happens, I'm leaving as soon as I finish--" and he jingled his rosary a little. 

"Well, don't let me interrupt." He knew Lantom would probably let him vent if he wanted to, but Foggy wasn't interested in justifying himself and he didn't have anything to confess. 

Lantom finished praying in silence, while Foggy stared at Matt in silence, and Matt didn't do much of anything, also in silence. But Lantom didn't get up right away after putting his rosary in his breast pocket, just sat with his hands loosely clasped and elbows on his knees. 

"This isn't my first bedside vigil, you know," he said, sounding weirdly casual about it. Maybe that came with being a priest. Maybe it was just being Matt's priest. "But something is troubling me."

"Besides the, uh, 'volunteer work?'" Foggy asked. 

"His doctors have been asking some difficult questions," Lantom said bluntly "There's apparently nothing on his CT scan to explain why he's still unconscious, even when they taper off the sedatives. They've talked about everything from diabetes to drug use to brain cancer, but nothing's panned out."

"Matt...gets up to some weird stuff," which might be the understatement of the year, but Foggy wasn't sure where Lantom was going with this. Or how much more Lantom knew about Matt's weird stuff and wasn't allowed to say. 

"That he does." Lantom rubbed his temple with one hand. "I was just hoping this wasn't one of those things."

He lingered in the room after Lantom left, teetering between working himself into a righteous rage and obsessing over what _weird stuff_ Matt could've been up to without anybody known. Neither feeling actually helped, although the rage still felt kind of satisfying. Neither of them provided him with answers. 

Something that wasn't the heart monitor beeped. 

He told himself it was nothing, and if it was something then it wasn't important, and if it was important then it was probably illegal. 

Beep. 

Oh, what the hell. He went digging into the cupboard in the corner, the only actual furniture in the room. Somebody had shoved Matt's clothes inside, salt-stained jeans and a bloodied sweatshirt, and in the pocket of his crusty coat Foggy found his phone, giving out another sad low-battery beep. How it had kept any kind of charge for, what, almost a week? Was probably an unsolved mystery in and of itself. 

When Foggy thumbed the power button, there was a missed call. From today. 

_This is illegal and unethical and probably meaningless,_ because Daredevil wouldn't call Matt on his phone-phone, he'd use a burner, right? And also it was deeply unethical to snoop into Matt's phone. And if he did find out who the new Daredevil was—well, he couldn't tip off Brett without incriminating Matt in the process. Except he wouldn't be able to tip off Brett because Daredevil wouldn't be calling Matt on his Matt phone, right?

Somebody knew who was harassing Hell's Kitchen in a devil mask, though. Somebody had sent Foggy and Karen ambiguously threatening song lyrics. 

Matt, it turned out, still had the same swipe-to-unlock gesture.

The missed incoming call showed up as a blocked number, so, there went that idea. The other incoming calls were mostly unfamiliar names and numbers, and his stomach clenched when he realized there hadn't been any since the night of the accident—no angry clients, no concerned neighbors, no oblivious booty calls. There was no reason for him to look at the outgoing call log, but at this point, in for a penny, in for a--

Wait. _Huh._

 _911 call came from Matt's own phone,_ he texted Karen. 

She eventually responded with, _I want to look inside his apartment._

//

"You really shouldn't tell me these things ahead of time," Foggy muttered into his upturned collar. "I'm just saying, plausible deniability."

Behind him, Karen was rattling the rooftop access door. (Matt's keys had not been in his coat pockets.) "It's still deniable, you're not looking."

"Yeah, but it's not plausible if you _tell me what you're doing."_

The door popped with a clang, though another gust of wind muffled the sound. "You don't have to come inside." 

"Like hell I'm not, it's warm in there."

Snow was coming down heavily enough that even the glare of the billboard next door was muted. Foggy felt his way over to the lamps, and then kind of wished he hadn't. Matt's apartment was—not messy, exactly, he couldn't let it get messy, supersenses or no. But that just made the neglect of the place more obvious. Trash neatly bagged but piling up by the front door, the sink stacked with dishes, a burnt crust of dried coffee in the bottom of the pot. Mail was piled up on the kitchen island, including a few things marked PAST DUE, and stacks of paperwork on the table—tidy stacks, but still. Foggy flipped through one of the folders and recognized some of the forms; Matt was still taking clients, or had been until pretty recently, even if none of them had called looking for him in the week since he got hurt.

Karen was looking around, like there'd be a neon arrow pointing to….something. A written confession that there'd been a hit? Or a framed photo of Matt's accomplices? (More sightings Friday morning, more scaring innocent people, and Brett looked like he was working on an ulcer or three.) "Do you know where he keeps the costume?" she asked. 

"The one time I saw it? Closet right behind you." They dug the trunk out, and it was all there, gloves and mask and deceptively light body armor. Not that the other Daredevil couldn't have worked up a suit of his own; Foggy didn't even know where Matt got his. "Well, this is failing to incriminate anybody except Matt himself."

Karen sat back on her heels. "It could still be a coincidence. The witness could've used Matt's phone for a bunch of different reasons."

"I'm not the one you need to be convincing of that," Foggy pointed out. 

"Just—it doesn't make any sense," she hissed, throwing that dumb horned mask to the ground. "What are we missing?"

Before Foggy could answer, another gust of wind rattled the building, and the lights abruptly went out. Not just the lamp, but the billboard, and the street lights below it; he was willing to bet the whole block had lost power. Faint light scattered by the snow and clouds made the windows one shade lighter than black, if that; otherwise everything was pitch-darkness. He fumbled for his phone, hoping he hadn't let the battery run down too far to use the flashlight since it wasn't like Matt would have one handy—

Karen flailed at Foggy's arm, eventually getting a fistful of his coat. "Did you hear that?" 

"Hear what?" 

"Shh!"

He listened; mostly what he heard was the wind, and Karen's shallow breathing. But then—what sounded like footsteps on the roof, heavy and slow, crunching in snow and frost. 

They hadn't locked the access door behind them. 

Foggy reached for the wall with the arm not currently held by Karen, trying to orient himself—they could hide in the bathroom, maybe, or in the entryway, but he wasn't sure they could get to either of those places quietly. If they stayed where they were, directly below the access door, they were only hidden so long as nobody looked straight down or actually came down the stairs. Maybe the footsteps on the roof didn't actually know they were in here, though. Maybe it wasn't anything to with them at all. 

Then again, they were technically breaking and entering, and Daredevil had been pulling overtime.

The access door opened, slowly, on squealing hinges. It didn't let in any more light, just a plume of damp, icy air. Now they were really stuck, but under cover of darkness—unless this guy had the same super-senses as Matt, surely he wouldn't be able to tell they were there if they kept quiet? Foggy found himself holding his breath, and Karen twisted his coat in her grip--

BOOM.

BOOM.

BOOM.

Each footfall on the stairs was like thunder, like a hammer-blow, impossibly loud in the stillness of the room. Karen jumped, and Foggy just made out a muffled whimper, like maybe she was covering her mouth with her other hand. Each crashing step came lower, lower, and he wasn't sure how much longer he could hold his breath, or how many more steps until the person on the stairs reached floor level, or what they would do when they did.

BOOM.

BOOM.

BOOM.

The footsteps stopped. Six feet away? Eight? 

Somewhere in the dark, a man's voice—a sound that was maybe, almost, a little laugh, low and throaty. 

And across the room, the windows suddenly _burst._

Karen screamed. Foggy probably screamed. The sound of shattering glass was deafening, and the sudden gust of icy wind sent all the loose papers and mail flying around the apartment like leaves, like hail. Foggy pulled Karen closer, with some half-assed thought about protecting her—from the wind, or the sheets of paper slapping at the walls, maybe even from the man on the stairs—

But few moments later the breeze died, letting the papers settle to the floor. The electricity flickered, came on, stayed, returning the lamp and the billboard and the snow-muted street lights. Foggy looked around wildly for the man who'd laughed, but aside from the papers scattered everywhere, he and Karen were alone.

"Where—what was that?" Karen asked, in a whisper. "Where did he--?"

Foggy shook his head helplessly, because he'd heard—the whole damn building must've heard, and there wasn't enough time for him to run, wasn't any reason for him to run when he'd had them dead to rights. He hadn't heard either of the doors open, and the windows—the glass had broken out of at least two of them, but the muntins were intact, so no exit that way. 

"Foggy…"

Karen had picked up one of the loose papers that had landed nearby—a page out of a police report, it looked like. But on both sides, in what looked like thick red felt-tip, were the same wobbly printed capitals as in the deli: 

WHATS PUZZLING YOU IS  
THE NATURE OF MY GAME.

Foggy took another good look around the apartment, and realized that every piece of paper on the floor had been defaced in the same way. 

//

Karen spent the night on Foggy's couch. Probably she didn't sleep any better than he did. 

"Option one," Foggy said over coffee when the sky was too bright to justify lying in bed any longer. "This is all a bunch of coincidences. Not that plausible an option, I admit, but it would be kinda comforting if this was just crazy random happenstance."

Karen just looked unimpressed at him. 

"Option two," he continued, "the same person who hit Matt is now posing as Daredevil and decided to scare the shit out of us. Which, I don't know about you, but mission fucking accomplished on my part."

"We know they're following us," Karen said, playing with her mug. "They left the notes in the deli. They could've—could've left the papers in Matt's apartment, as a warning, and called his phone to lure us there."

"But if they're trying to warn us off, there's a lot easier ways to do it than classic rock," Foggy said. "And a lot more _direct_ ways to do it than waiting for us to break into Matt's apartment so they can trash it." 

"If," Karen said, and then stared into her coffee for a few moments. "If that guy wanted to hurt us, he could've. He had us, Foggy. So that means he didn't want to hurt us."

"Which is option three," Foggy declared reluctantly. "Matt has made a new friend."

"Friends," she corrected. "There has to be more than one of them, no one person could move that fast."

"Well, fine, he's got a whole damn posse kicking ass in red kevlar." Karen glared at him. "Either way, if they're not the ones who put him in the hospital, and they don't want us involved any more than Matt does, it doesn't seem like there's much else for us to do." 

Karen shook her head. "I don't know that he...I don't know how you found out, Foggy, but Matt definitely told me of his own free will. It's not that he doesn't want us involved, I think, it's that he doesn't know how to...compartmentalize? Balance?"

"Lie?" Foggy suggested. 

"That's not fair," Karen said. 

"Neither was ditching court to play ninjas with his ex-girlfriend."

"Is that really what you think he was doing?"

"Why are you defending him?"

"Since when was this a trial?"

Foggy dumped the rest of his coffee down the drain and washed his mug. He got it really, really clean. Like, sparkling. "I don't know what I'm doing here," he finally said. 

Karen stood up and leaned against him, very carefully, like he might crumble under her weight. "I'm trying to do what's best for my friend, and for the neighborhood," she said quietly. "Because I think he'd try to do that, too."

"Yeah, and look at how well that's worked out for him," Foggy shot back, sharing at the bubbles swirling down the drain.

//

There was one constructive thing he could do: He went back, during the daylight, to tape plastic over the broken windows, while Karen made some calls to the building's super. He couldn't help but notice that there was no glass on the floor. 

Claire called back, just as the snow was starting to fall again. _"So this is going to sound nuts."_

"I have an incredibly high tolerance for nuts right now."

 _"I talked to...some guys. A certain guy. About whoever is wearing the mask now."_ Long pause. _"Nobody had any solid info, but I'm supposed to tell you that there's power in blood. And that Hell's Kitchen is haunted."_

Foggy blinked. "In what way haunted, exactly?"

 _"Look, I'm just the messenger,"_ she said quickly.

"But you trust this 'guy'?"

_"Let's say I have reasons to believe this one in particular isn't made of bullshit."_

"That's a ringing endorsement, Claire, I'm sure he's very proud."

_"It's the best I got." She paused. "I also checked in with some folks I still know at Metro-General. This is technically a massive HIPAA violation, but--you should know that if nothing changes with Matt in the next couple days, they're going to transfer him to a dedicated respiratory therapy facility. That's the fancy name for a vent farm."_

Foggy stared at the plastic sheeting and the vague suggesting of snow on the other side of it, long after Claire had hung up. He had some dim memories of hymns about _power in the blood_ from his short-lived career in the children's choir, which in retrospect was creepy as hell—but that had been Easter, not Christmas, and anyway he couldn't picture Matt recruiting emergency back-up Daredevils through his church. 

And...well, ghosts didn't exist. Ghosts, if they did exist, didn't engage in vigilante justice. Ghosts, if they did exist, required somebody to die first.

He finished taping the windows and started picking up the mess of paper off the floor. All of it was covered, front and back, with the refrain to "Sympathy for the Devil," over and over—it would've taken hours to do by hand, but it wasn't regular enough to be machine-printed. And it was all the same handwriting, all wobbly and slanting along the page, like--

\--like--

Foggy stared at the form in his hand. Under a layer of red ink, Matt had signed and dated it in blue ballpoint, and his signature slanted off the line a little because, of course, he couldn't know where the line was. 

Most of the forms had been filled in electronically, but some of them had been done by hand, in block capitals that sometimes crowded together or slanted off the line. Because Matt hated having to write things by hand, but if it couldn't be avoided he printed in block letters for clarity, and Foggy had learned to decode his penmanship years ago, Jesus, how had he not noticed it until now?

Probably because it was impossible. Or at least really, really improbable. Anything involving vigilantes in devil masks was already pretty absurd, but—Occam's Razor. No needlessly multiplying entities. 

Entities, now there was a choice of words.

He finished piling the paper back on Matt's table and then texted Karen. _I'm gonna need to borrow your keys._

//

Because it made sense, if he was going to pretend this was haunting—it made sense to go to the grave. 

The office formerly known as Nelson and Murdock was freezing inside; the radiators were lukewarm and knocking like crazy, and the overhead light occasionally flickered a little, like the bulb was starting to go. Matt had moved his stuff to what used to be Karen's desk, right out front, and the rest of the space stood empty. Foggy had talked Karen out of coming with him. 

"Probably nothing's gonna happen," he told her. "Small chance I'm gonna get my face kicked in. I'll check in with you, okay?"

He sat in front of the desk, and checked his (fully-charged, now, he'd checked twice) phone. Sunrise was eight hours off, and so far, except for the thing in the deli, there'd been no activity during daylight hours. "If you're done acting like a dick, you can show up any time," he said aloud, not addressing any direction in particular. 

Then he waited. 

He waited a lot, actually. 

He texted Karen periodically, like he'd promised. He almost nodded off in the chair. The knocking of the radiator kept starting him out of a half-doze with his heart in his throat, and eventually he had to allow that staying up all night waiting for vigilantes to attack maybe wasn't his best life decision. The old coffee maker was still in the corner, and Foggy decided to fix himself a cup just to keep from dozing off entirely. Not to mention it would warm him up a little. 

He grabbed the carafe and turned towards the kitchenette--

\--and someone slammed him into the wall from behind. 

Foggy yelped. It was not manly. He barely managed to throw one arm up to keep his face from bouncing off the drywall, but his other arm was twisted painfully behind his back. He was held, pinned for a moment, and then a very familiar voice spoke in his ear.

"Well, speak of the devil."

Foggy swallowed. "Leave the humor to me, I'm better at it."

There was the same low, not-quite-a-laugh as he'd heard in Matt's apartment. The grip on his arm relaxed enough that Foggy could turn around.

He looked like Matt, mostly. The costume was the same one he and Karen had found—and left—in the trunk in Matt's closet, down to the scuffs and scratches. He had the same level of hobo beard that Matt was currently sporting, the same yellowing bruises and scabbed cuts visible around the edges of the mask. His stance, his posture, was...well. Maybe this was how Matt always looked when he went out looking for this kind of fight. 

"So, what's your deal?" Foggy asked, once he was sure his voice wouldn't wobble. "Shapeshifter? Mind-reader? Do I need to call in what’s left of the Avengers?"

"Oh, Foggy," said Daredevil, with an exaggerated little pout. "I thought you'd figured it out."

Foggy swallowed again around the dryness in his throat. "Well, if you're going out in public dressed like that, I don't think you get to call yourself 'a man of wealth and _taste.'"_

That stupid, low laugh again. Daredevil leaned backwards against Matt's desk, crossing his arms. "Strike two. C'mon, don't you know an old friend when you see him?"

"Matt's still in the hospital," Foggy pointed out. "So unless he picked up another superpower or two recently, you don't get to call me 'friend.'"

"Ball one," he shot back. "Though I wouldn't call it a superpower per se. And you didn't say 'friend' either."

Foggy knew what he said, thanks. "So if it's not a power, what is it? Cloning?"

"Ball two."

"Time travel?"

"Ball three."

"Long-lost evil twin?" Foggy snapped in frustration.

"And strike three," Daredevil said, but he looked—pleased with himself, grinning with Matt's scabbed lips. Too pleased with himself to keep quiet. "We split."

"Split?" Foggy echoed, stupidly, though in the quiet of the office he couldn't possibly have misheard. "As in--?"

"He let the devil out," Daredevil said, and when he tilted his head like that the fake lenses in his mask practically glowed. "We broke up the band, so to speak. I get the blood, he gets the rhetoric. He gets to be Thurgood Marshall and I get to fight."

Foggy was pretty sure his jaw was hanging open. "He—that— _you are him,"_ he finally spluttered. "What does that mean? How is that even possible?"

"Would you believe it's a Christmas miracle?" Daredevil asked innocently. 

"No." 

He shrugged. "Yeah, I don't think so either."

Foggy fought the urge to reach out and poke him—obviously he was real, or at least real enough for hitting and writing and shattering glass, though Foggy's breath made visible clouds in the cold room and Daredevil's...didn't. He was here, somehow, even though Foggy hadn't heard him come in, just like he hadn't heard him leave the night before. "So is this why he's not waking up?" he asked eventually, trying to put the pieces together. "Because...you're out here?"

"Not really my problem either way," Daredevil said. 

"Bullshit," Foggy shot back. "This is your problem because you are the same person. If you can fix this--"

"Fix it?" Daredevil said, sounding shocked. "Foggy, I am better like this. No weakness, no pain, no distractions. I can finally protect my city the way I always wanted to."

"Yeah, and who protects us from you?" Foggy asked. "Or are people who smoke on the fire escape on top of your Most Wanted list now?"

Daredevil wagged a finger at him. "See? You hate me. You want me gone. You want the daylight Matt, the version you thought you knew. Well, here you are." He spread his arms wide. "Merry Christmas. He's all yours."

"He's in a coma!" Foggy snapped, and his voice broke a little on the last word. 

"Well, I never said there wasn't a catch."

Foggy raked his fingers through his hair, fighting for words, here, for something that would make this make sense. He had no idea if any of this was real, could be real, how he could be having this conversation with whoever, _whatever,_ a ghost or a monster or a psychic projection of Matt's anger issues—

"What do you mean he 'let you out'?" he asked, because suddenly it seemed important. 

Daredevil cocked his head, which—he'd seen Matt do that, once or twice, after he'd confessed about his senses, and it always looked a little silly and a little alien. Daredevil made it look sinister. "It's a figure of speech."

But Foggy knew a hostile witness when he saw one. "You don't seem to like him very much, considering you _are_ him," he pressed. "And, spooky super-senses or not, Matt was a lawyer before he was you."

"The Murdock boys always had the devil in them," Daredevil said with a deadly quiet. "If you didn't see me sooner, that's your mistake."

"Hey now," Foggy said. "Let's give credit to Matt's incredible lying skills where it's due."

Daredevil lunged forward, and Foggy was about ninety percent certain the face-in-kicking was about to commence. But Daredevil's fist landed on the wall, and though he was crowding into Foggy's personal space he didn't touch him. "He's due _nothing,"_ he hissed. "He's nothing but a distraction from the mission."

"Your 'mission' doesn't exist without him," Foggy pointed out, knowing full well his heartrate was betraying him. "You're not even a person, much less the devil. You're three psychological problems in a trenchcoat, and it's Matt's heart and Matt's God and all Matt's _rhetoric_ that made you real."

Daredevil bared his teeth. "But the blood is compulsory. I've bled too much for this city to stop now."

"So you're admitting," Foggy said, "that he wants to stop?"

Daredevil hesitated; his lips were still curled up, not in a way anyone could mistake for a smile. "He wants friendship and mercy and all the things I can't have. I want justice and action and all the things he can't stomach. I think that's what they call irreconcilable differences."

"Well, it's a little hard to reconcile with him if he's _dead."_

"Blood is compulsory," Daredevil said again, leaning in uncomfortably close to whisper into Foggy's ear. There wasn't any warmth, literally, in the breath that ghosted across his face. "But if it makes you feel any better— _he'd_ choose you. If it was down to you or me, he'd rather have you. That's why he let me out."

Foggy blinked in perfect non-comprehension. In the instant his eyes were closed, Daredevil vanished, like he'd never been there. 

//

He went home, and he slept, mostly because he was exhausted from two late nights in a row. He texted Karen first to let her know his face wasn't kicked in, but he didn't tell her what had happened, because, well….he wasn't sure what had happened. 

There was a fist-sized dent in the drywall at the office, that was absolutely real. The pain in his shoulder from being put in a hammerlock was pretty goddamn real as well. The rest...well, it could've been a very vivid hallucination, though he was pretty sure a hallucination shouldn't be able to quote a play Foggy'd never read.

 _(Love,_ blood, and rhetoric: that was the full quote, according to Google. Maybe he'd heard the reference somewhere else and forgotten the love part. Maybe there was a reason Daredevil had forgotten it. Assuming it hadn't been a hallucination, but if it wasn't then _what the hell.)_

The noon news lead with Daredevil, robbers in the ICU and night-shift workers scared out of their minds and Brett Mahoney's ulcers. Foggy toyed with his phone while the meteorologist made noises about record low temperatures and where the hell they were gonna put all this snow. He made the call.

"Do you forgive him?" he asked Karen, in a coffee shop he chose entirely because it was east of Eighth Avenue. 

She shrugged a little. "I think I'm working on it. I don't think forgiveness is an all-at-once thing."

"Do you think he deserves it?"

"Foggy," she said, a little scolding, a little fond. "I think...I know he lied to you for a lot longer than he lied to me. I know it's more personal. You don't have to forgive him just because he's hurt."

"I'm sick of being mad at him," Foggy admitted. "But if he's just gonna do the same bullshit again--"

Because they were the same person, all ghost stories aside, and if nothing so far had stopped Matt, nothing would. 

Karen squeezed his hand. "I get it. I know. That's why it's divine, isn't it? To err is human, to forgive--"

"Divine." Foggy tried to finish his coffee, but it had gone cold and thick in the bottom of the cup. "You wanna—I think I'm gonna swing by and see him, do you want to come?" 

She shook her head. "I've got an article for the Bulletin due tomorrow morning and I still haven't figured out how to end it."

"Rocks fall, everyone dies," Foggy said deadpan, to get a smile out of her. She kissed him on the head before she left. 

//

Father Lantom wasn't waiting in the ICU this time. Sundays were kind of his busy day, after all. Foggy sat next to Matt's bed, taking in the bruises and the scabs and the dark rings under his eyes even after he'd been sleeping for a whole damned week. There was an EEG next to the bed in addition to the ventilator—or at least, he thought it was called an EEG, there were electrodes glued to Matt's head and a bunch of wiggly lines on a screen. He had no idea what it meant. 

He scooted his chair close enough that he could pick up Matt's hand. The bandage-mittens were gone, just a few smaller dressings on his fingertips, but the skin still looked red and tight in patches. He wondered how long it would be before Matt could read again. "So," Foggy said and then stopped, because his voice seemed awfully loud and the room seemed awfully open and talking to a man in a coma about your possible hallucination seemed...well…

Screw it. It made as much sense as listening to the possible hallucination in the first place.

"So I think I talked to your id," Foggy said, as quietly as he could. It should still be loud enough for Matt, though, if Matt was able to hear anything at all. "That's the angry sex part, right? The id? Not that anything sexy happened, obviously, but the angry part…kind of keeps breaking your things, sorry. But hey, you might be the first Catholic in the history of Jesus to feel so guilty that you _made a person,_ so, y'know, go you."

No change in Matt's vitals. No sign he was hearing anything. 

"Except he's not a separate person," Foggy continued. "I know it doesn't work like that. You're not Jekyll and Hyde, you're Matt Murdock, singular. Even if sometimes it seems like you're a total stranger."

No response.

"I'm still so goddamned mad you," he admitted. "But you know that. And I miss you, which...I don't know if you know that. But I do. Those two things are not mutually exclusive. Sometimes it feels like it's ripping me in half, but that's a metaphor, not a suggestion."

He paused when he heard a nurse pass by, but she didn't step into Matt's room. 

"Maybe it really was a hallucination," he admitted. "Maybe there's radon or mold or something in the office. Maybe that was the Ghost of Christmas Future coming to warn me—I don't want the last thing I ever say to you be shitty awkward small talk, Matt. I don't want the last thing you ever hear from me to be shitty. I want you to wake up, and I want...I want my friend back."

No reaction. Was there even any point in saying all this?

"I'll make you a deal," he blurted, rubbing his eyes. "That's what you're supposed to do with the devil, right? I know there's no point in asking you to stop doing—what you do. Apparently the _laws of nature_ can't stop you, so I might as well quit while I'm ahead. Just. I want to trust you again. I want to forgive you. And I know that means trusting everything, even the things you do in the dark. I can't promise I'll be any good at it but I want to try. I just need to know you're trying, too."

Foggy watched the machines for a little while, watched Matt's face, and thought about miracles. 

"Your move, Murdock."

//

He bought some groceries on the way home, helped his neighbor in 1C bring in her groceries, called the super to complain about how icy the front steps had gotten. He fixed dinner and checked his work e-mail and called his mom, who wanted to know when he'd be over for Christmas. 

Outside his windows, the snow had stopped, but the night was long and dark and very, very cold.

//

The headlines on Monday morning lead with _Warm Front to Relieve Frozen East Coast,_ but just under that: _Silent Night: Daredevil Ends Holiday Surge?_

Foggy went to work, sat through the meetings and called back his clients and plowed through his to-do list like a pro. At ten, he got a text from Lantom: _Matt's awake and talking_ He then continued to plow through his to-do list, because scutwork: the only way he was gonna avoid having to come in on Christmas was if literally no one else in the firm could foist off so much as a memo on him. 

But five o'clock saw him out the door, chasing a sunset he hadn't actually gotten to see. Karen was already in Matt's room when he got there, and Claire, sitting on opposite sides of the bed. Matt still looked like warmed-over shit, and he still had the NG tube and the EEG machine wired to his head—but the breathing tube was gone, and his eyes were half-open, flicking from side to side as Karen asked something and Claire answered. 

Foggy exhaled, and it felt like he'd been holding his breath for a week. 

Matt's eyes widened a little, and he turned his face towards the door. His voice sounded like he'd been gargling with broken glass. "Foggy?"

"Yeah, great guess," Foggy said, hurrying into the room before Matt showed off anything else a blind guy shouldn't be able to do. "How're you feeling?"

"Vicodin," Matt croaked, with a little thumbs-up. Oh, Jesus, he was _stoned._ Then again, with that many broken bones, he probably needed it.

"Yeah, apparently all it takes to get him to accept a painkiller is being run over, imagine that," Claire said dryly. 

"Wasn't run over," Matt protested, then frowned. "Was I?"

"God, I hope so, or else I'd hate to see the other guy," Foggy said, and Matt laughed at that—not soft or low, a terrible horse giggle, and—and yeah, Foggy had missed this, had missed it a _lot._

Karen was grinning, too, had been since Foggy showed up. "I was just telling them that the GoFundMe actually got, uh, funded," she said. "You've got some really grateful ex-clients, you know."

"How grateful are we talking here?" Foggy asked, because he had a pretty good idea of how many of Matt's clients paid in Rice Krispie Treats.

"I don't wanna know how grateful, yet," Matt said, and even mimed covering his ears as if that would do a damn thing. "Not while I'm on drugs."

Karen, however, opened up the site on her phone and showed Foggy just how grateful, and – Jesus. "You know the end of _It's a Wonderful Life?_ " he asked. "With the bells and the singing and the big pile of money?"

"'No man is a failure who has friends'?" Claire quoted, but that was--that was mistake, that was such a mistake, because Matt looked away from them, blinking tears out of his eyes. Vicodin. Foggy was gonna blame the Vicodin. 

Claire changed the subject, thankfully, to something a little less fraught, and at some point Matt dozed off sitting up. Apparently being in a coma was hard work. Karen took her leave after that, and then Claire did. And then Foggy should have too, because Matt was on painkillers and they had about five and a half awful conversations in front of them, none of which were well suited to a hospital room with glass walls. 

But when he made to start gathering his stuff, Matt's eyes popped open again. "Hey," he said, wincing a little as he turned in Foggy's direction. 

"You need some more painkillers?" Foggy asked. 

"Not yet." Matt licked his lips and directed his eyes more or less in Foggy's direction, his best approximation of eye contact. "I'm sorry."

Foggy set his satchel back down on the floor. "Thank you."

"I don't remember—literally, don't remember what hit me," Matt continued. "But I remember, lying on the ground, thinking—it wasn't worth it. It's not worth it. Nothing's promised. And I don't want to die with you still resenting me."

"I'm working on that," Foggy said. It was his end of the deal, even if Matt hadn't been awake to hear him make it. 

Matt nodded, as if he was willing to accept those terms, and settled back onto his back. "I had some—really weird dreams," he blurted. A little crease formed between his eyebrows. "I think they were dreams."

And that was Foggy's cue to go, because _that_ conversation either needed more alcohol or less opiates. "You can tell me about them later. I'm gonna head out—unless you really want me to ask someone to top you up?"

"Would you?" Matt said, looking guilty. "I shouldn't, it screws up my senses, but—they’ll think it’s weird if I start refusing too soon. Also I can literally feel the broken ends of my ribs rubbing together."

"That sounds horrible and I can't un-imagine it," Foggy said deadpan. Matt's little flinch said maybe it was too soon for that kind of humor. "I'll say something at the desk. Maybe see if I can find you some distractions besides prescription opiates."

"Thanks," Matt said. Then, a little more firmly "Thank you for coming back."

Foggy found himself smiling weakly; he still wasn't sure if Matt could tell that or not from a distance. "Yeah. You too."

**Works inspired by this one:**

  * [[Podfic] Heaven Cannot Hold Him, Nor Earth Sustain - by Mad_Maudlin](https://archiveofourown.org/works/10371198) by [Kahara_the_Ghostly_Galoomp](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Kahara_the_Ghostly_Galoomp/pseuds/Kahara_the_Ghostly_Galoomp)




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